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Professor, Executive Director of Learning Assistant Program, Co-Director Center for STEM Learning • The Learning Assistant Program, Physics and Everyday Thinking High School, Center for STEM Learning
Learning Assistant Program • School of Education

Office: Room 320D, 249 UCB, Boulder CO 80309

Valerie K Otero is a Professor of Science Education and co-founder of the Colorado Learning Assistant program and the Center for STEM Learning. Professor Otero has advised the National Academy of Sciences and NASA on issues in science education. Her innovative instructional models have spread throughout the world, reaching over 80 universities throughout the U.S. and in Singapore, Ireland, Japan, and India. Professor Otero has received awards for her research and teaching and has been recognized nationally by the American Physical Society for her contributions to physics education. Otero is a Hispanic, first generation college student, who grew up working after school at her parent’s grocery store and at the New Mexico State Fair (where she still works every September). In addition to her international work on faculty development and institutional change through the LA Program, her research in high school physics investigates and builds leaning environments that engage students’ hearts and minds through scientific experimentation, natural curiosity, and pure enjoyment of understanding our world.